A 21-year-old American woman has achieved an unbelievable feat that many only dream of. Visiting every single country on Earth. Photo / Instagram
A 21-year-old woman from the US has achieved what many of us can't achieve in an entire lifetime: she's just become the youngest person to travel to every country on the planet.
Lexie Alford has visited every single one of the 196 sovereign nations and broken the record for the youngest person to do so.
The final country she ticked off her list was North Korea, where she arrived on May 31.
She told Fox News her first feeling after achieving her goal was "relief".
"I've been working through extreme anxiety for the past six-plus months overcoming the obstacles that go along with getting into some of the least accessible places in the world. It wasn't until the moment in that obscure conference room, of all places, that it really sunk in how far I've come," she said.
"Not many times in life does everything that you've worked towards for years culminate into a single moment," Alford added, saying she felt overwhelming "gratitude, joy and satisfaction" to accomplish the milestone.
Her parents are both travel agents, which allowed Alford to tick off a few exotic locations in her childhood.
She started saving up for her own travels at the age of 12, when she decided to visit every country in the world. She's spent the last decade working towards that goal.
Known as LexieLimitless on Instagram, she says she hopes her world record will inspire others to explore.
"Honestly, in the beginning, I simply wanted to push the limits of what I thought I could do with my life and see as much of the world as possible in the process," she told Forbes magazine.
"It wasn't until things started getting really challenging that I realised I was inspiring people around me, especially young women. I was determined to show everyone that the world isn't as scary as the media portrays it to be and that there's kindness everywhere."
She's been pursuing the world record full-time since 2016, after graduating.
"I travelled solo for over seven months, throughout the past two years, to 50 or so countries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean and the South Pacific Islands," she told Fox News.
"Obtaining all the visas required for American citizens was one of the most difficult aspects of breaking this record. I spent years applying and reapplying for visas in both the US and abroad," she added.
She says her travels were all "completely self-funded", and she struck a few branded deals during that time, which helped pay for the trips, on top of her photography and blogging work.
She says her favourite places are Venezuela and Pakistan.
"My friend and I were the only people camping at the falls in Canaima National Park in November 2018 which demonstrated how much the tourism industry has been affected there since the economic crisis began," she told Fox News.
"I also loved visiting Northern Pakistan, the natural beauty of the mountains and kindness of the locals was astonishing but again there's barely any tourism in the country because of negative stereotypes about the country in the media," she added.
"The most pleasant surprise about travelling to all these misunderstood areas of the world was that the countries that I had least expectations for ended up being the most incredible."
She now has to submit all the evidence to the Guinness World Record committee.
Learn from this Kiwi traveller's mistakes when planning your 2025 adventures.